The Hanging Doll
George Bower
I heard the doll banging on the door. Fear flooded through me. I knew that the lock would not last forever. If I had any chance of survival I would have to jump out the window and run. As I was getting ready to jump, the lock gave way and the doll stepped into the room. Her big, black eyes reflected the shiny knife blade perfectly.
I jumped, seriously hurting my right leg. I had enough sense to keep going though. When I was roughly two metres from the spot I had landed, the doll fell down onto her wooden legs, and started running towards me. My immediate instincts were to run to the woods, and try to smash her little head off. Nice thoughts for a twelve-year-old I think.
When I reach the woods, I remembered how people considered the logs to be a tripping hazard. Hence the clearing of the muddy ground of the woods. In that case I had to change my plan from fighting with a log to carry on running.
After about two hours of running I looked around and she was gone. I had lost her. I rested as the long run made my legs explode with pain. Suddenly I heard a branch above me crunch. The doll swooped down elegantly like a bird, and landed next to me. She swung the knife handle at me, and the world turned black.
I awoke to the smell of grey smoke coming from torches hung on the trees. I was standing on a red wooden platform with a perfectly tied noose was wrapped around my neck. The evil doll was torturingly waving the rope in my face. I was going to be hung! Just when I thought the doll was going to pull the rope, she started singing. “Are you, are you coming to the tree / where a dead man cried out for his love flee. / Strange things did happen here, no stranger would it seem / if we met at midnight in the hanging tree.”
She stopped and before you could say ‘hanging tree’, she pulled the rope.